The idea must have crossed the minds on the Corvette team once before: a hybrid Corvette. After all, hybrid powertrains are all the rage in supercars. And they produced oodles of power we never thought imaginable with the same basic technology seen in the Toyota Prius.
While the future may hold some surprises for the Corvette, one private company is readying their own interpretation of an electric Corvette. Genovation Cars has announced it has plans to produce a fully-electric Corvette.
Based on the previous-generation C6 Corvette, the car will trade its tried and true LS7 7.0-liter V8 for a bundle of batteries and electric motors. The company is calling their upcoming creation the GXE, short for Genovation Extreme Electric, and they’re throwing around numbers like a 0-60 time of 3.0 seconds, 700 hp and 600 lb-ft of torque and a top speed of 200 mph. Those are supercar numbers, but we’ll reserve judgement until the real thing shows its face.
And Genovation Cars has plans to do just that. It says to watch for the Corvette GXE to be revealed at the Electronic Vehicle Technology Expo this September, where they will put their prototype on the track to back up its lofty performance claims.
Comments
I will be watching. After watching a Tesla beat a Dodge Hellcat, I wondered how long before someone thought to put an electric engine in a Vette. Well, I see I won’t have to wait very long.
If they can be successful, this will definately be most cool, although I will miss the throaty growl.
Battery weight will be the biggest issue as Chevy’s GEN 2 Volt battery tips the scale at about 400 lbs or about twice was a full tank of gas; Tesla’s battery is about 1,000 lbs which means Genovation’s C6 Corvette might be heavier than a production C7 Corvette’s 3300 lbs.